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The Elephant In The Room

Manga and anime are, to most people, apples to oranges…but that’s not quite true. Anime and manga are merely different mediums; one being animated and the other a series of drawings, but they are both strung together by dialogues and a general plot. They share similar art styles and one usually derives from the other.

Not admitting they are similar just because of the way they are showcased is flawed, especially in the case of an adaptation from one medium to the other. It’ll be the same story with some tweaks and changes with the main difference being that it’s now either colorful and moving or stuck on paper.

Adaptations from anime to manga usually allow the original story to be fleshed out and expand, whereas manga to anime adaptations end up heavily changed and condensed…which doesn’t mean it won’t work! It just means that it can fall short of what could be expected by the original work’s fans. The big problem here is that sometimes the switch from one medium to the other will possibly be nothing short of disastrous whether it’s because characters and plots were changed or cut off entirely, or simply because the planning and execution of said adaptations didn’t match up to the needs of a given genre.

Just to clarify, manga and anime are both great when it comes to their own particular strengths and even weaknesses. It’s only when they come together through a particular story that we begin seeing that one version usually stands a top of the other. Any otaku will at any given time be heard saying “The manga/anime version was superior, because…” either that or hear another one saying it.

Here we’ll present three clear examples as to why, using shows that have been reviewed on the site and a well known classic:

Cue The Banjo Music

Let’s begin with a classic: Rurouni Kenshin, also known as Samurai X, this story saw the light of day as a manga that went to become a roaring success for its treatment of Japanese history and customs during the early stages of the Meiji era, presenting the way that western influences, industrialization and technology began to change and form ancient Japan into what’s it today. These elements were the backdrop to an amazing story of courage, romance and redemption presented to us through the character Himura Kenshin, once an expert and ruthless assassin that made a name for himself during the last half of the Bakumatsu (the last years of the Edo period.)

The manga took its time to develop the story and establish the characters and settings; the anime became heavy in the action department and sometimes rushed forward with the plot leading to many filler episodes until the manga could catch up. The latter half of the anime didn’t see the light during its original run on Cartoon Network in the US, but it did get dubbed and aired in Latin America all the way through where it went to become a hit, and guess where I grew up?

Here’s the thing: Samurai X (as we knew it in this part of the world) was excellent. But it dropped the ball so freaking hard that it caused many of us to choke on bile. The show was somewhat grounded on reality. There were no real enemies with impractical costumes and honest to God super powers, they all had some sort of explanation that made the most preposterous of them seem slightly plausible.

Then along comes a group of super Christians, who are then followed by a bunch of tools wielding swords of gold and with a cast of cronies dressed as a freaking purple cobra a brown bat and a skeleton. This went out of the window so hard that the show was canceled in Japan and the stations airing it simply reran it up to the episodes before the super pals of Christ. But why did this happen?

Simply put, the anime production crew moved too fast and too far with the manga’s story, taking it to places where it was never meant to go and thus once the manga reached a hiatus the anime was forced to go into filler and it ended shooting itself in the foot and bleeding to death.

This went to become a cautionary tale on adaptations, both from one medium to other and from markets, but the anime itself is still deserves a review and we’ll do so later, promise.

This article is so big it needs to be taken in two parts (that’s what she said), so check out part two for the exciting conclusion as well as the next two examples, which are surely on your top favorites list!

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